


trusting things beyond mistake

by prettydizzeed



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series)
Genre: Author is trans, Coming Out, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Making Up, Nonbinary Character, Other, Song: The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us (Sufjan Stevens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:34:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27811588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettydizzeed/pseuds/prettydizzeed
Summary: Apparently, when Demetri says “No hard feelings,” he means it.
Relationships: Background Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence, Demetri & Eli "Hawk" Moskowitz, Demitri/Eli "Hawk" Moskowitz
Comments: 24
Kudos: 124





	trusting things beyond mistake

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by this post by @fulltimehabibti: https://fulltimehabibti.tumblr.com/post/632082443670781952/what-r-ur-predictions-for-ck-s3-but-then-also
> 
> title is, of course, from the predatory wasp of the palisades is out to get us by sufjan stevens
> 
> warnings for canon-typical misogynistic language and some metaphors that get a bit gory

Apparently, when Demetri says “No hard feelings,” he means it.

He shows up at Hawk’s hospital room, and of course their mom lets him in, ducks out to go to the bathroom or get a drink or whatever—the first time she’s left their room all day. 

“Hey,” Demetri says, his hands tangled together at his waist. Hawk looks at him, the bruises on his arms a kaleidoscope of purple and red, the scratch on his cheek that Hawk’s not sure how it got there. It’s shallow, he’ll be fine, but it’s so _wrong,_ seeing it there. Demetri’s skin has always been so soft, something Hawk was scared to brush up against when they elbowed each other while playing video games or reached into the popcorn bowl at the same time.

 _You’d actually hurt me?_ the Demetri in their head asks, and in their head, Hawk says _No, never,_ but that’s not how the story goes. Hawk swooped in and sunk their talons into Demetri’s soft chest and pulled out his beating heart and carried it away in their beak. 

The Demetri in the hospital room is trying not to look like he’s looking at Hawk’s skin. Eighty-nine pieces of glass, the doctors said they pulled out. Their face and neck and arms are covered in tiny pieces of gauze, like a kid who just got done shaving for the first time except on every exposed surface of skin. 

The doctors weren’t sure yet if it’d scar. Quite the collection they’d have then, huh.

“Look, you don’t have to talk to me,” Demetri says. “I know you… You probably don’t want to see me. I don’t know _why,_ because it’s an irrefutable fact that you started this, but whatever. I just… I heard this song recently and I, uh. Thought of you. So I’m gonna play it now, because maybe this is the only time when you can’t start swinging at me. So.” 

He’s been sitting in the hospital chair while saying this, all knees and elbows and impossibly long neck, looking at the wall across from him and not anywhere near Hawk. It’s a relief and a disappointment. 

Demetri presses play. 

The song is both haunting and calming, lulling them into something other than sleep—nostalgia? Longing? The words are hard to decipher, but the sound of them reverberates around in their ribcage long after each note plays out. 

_We were in love_ is pretty hard not to hear, though. Of all the things to enunciate, to draw out like it isn’t something that makes you want to run screaming. 

Demetri still won’t look at them, but when his phone speaker announces _I can't explain the state that I'm in, the state of my heart, he was my best friend,_ suddenly it’s the most impressive thing in the world that he hasn’t dropped it yet. 

Sensei Kreese could never have stomached this kind of guts. Wouldn’t have known how to call it courage without burning down his entire worldview. 

Sensei Lawrence, though—maybe this was what he meant about carving a space between the lines of a creed, about wanting to live in the gray. 

There are words after it, they know, but once they hear _Though we have sparred, wrestled and raged, I can tell you I love him each day,_ it’s the only thing their head has room for. Doctor Who and hook punches and the sting of a tattoo gun and the simmering shame of all their secrets being announced through a microphone—at a house party; in a high school cafeteria—and the old, familiar bruise of hating what they saw in the mirror, all of that packs its bags. The only thought they’ve got is the one they’ve been kicking in the teeth for years: _I love him._

 _I don’t need any of that pussy shit,_ they think, but what comes out of their mouth sounds more like a sob. _If those tears leave your eyes, you lose_ they hear in Sensei Kreese’s voice, but then it’s Sensei Lawrence’s from the middle of practice two weeks ago saying _Crying is a normal bodily function, like shitting and bleeding. Do you get embarrassed when you bleed, Mr. Diaz?_

Do you get embarrassed when you bleed, Hawk?

Only after someone holds out a bandage.

“So, yeah,” Demetri says, and when he stands up and steps forward, up to the bed, and kisses their forehead, they’re still too busy trying not to let their heart keep pumping all their blood directly out the gaping hole in their chest to truly process it until after he’s scurried out of the room. 

By the time they manage to raise an awed hand to the skin, Sensei Lawrence is tapping on the doorframe. 

“Saw your friend leaving,” he says after the usual pleasantries—how you feeling, when do they let you out of here, what the fuck were you thinking. “The mouthy one.”

“He’s not my friend,” they mutter, and Sensei Lawrence leans back in the seat, crosses his arms. He has the look of a man who has spent longer days than this sitting in a hospital chair.

“Don't tell me you two are fighting over some chick, too.”

“Uh. Something like that,” Hawk says, and Sensei must catch something in their eye, because he clasps his hands between his knees and leans forward. 

“Did I ever tell you about the kid I beat the shit out of in high school?”

Hawk blinks. “No, Sensei.”

Sensei Lawrence sighs. Stares at the hospital wall. He suddenly looks so weary, like he’s usually moving too fast for all the lines around his features to be seen and now that he’s been forcibly stopped in his tracks, they’ve solidified. “He was a skinny little twerp. Pain in my ass. I—I roughed him up really bad. Almost killed him, actually.”

Hawk swallows. It seems stupid in retrospect, exactly the kind of thing Demetri would cuff them upside the head for, but they’d never really thought that far along the implications of “no mercy.” To the point where it was impossible to turn around and follow your own footsteps back out. 

“Then what happened?” they ask. 

“Then he beat me at the All-Valley and his stupid jingles got stuck in my head for the next thirty years,” Sensei says, and despite everything, despite even the words that he let out of his mouth forty-five seconds ago, he smiles. “And when I finally saw him again, it was like, _fuck, man, I’m into you._ But I guess by then it was too late, ‘cause here we are, still kicking the shit out of each other and hurting everybody else in the process.”

Sensei blows out a long breath. “Look, I—I don’t think Mouthy is gonna beat you in any tournaments any time soon. But I don’t want you to look back on this shit a few decades from now and wonder what could’ve been different if you hadn’t been too pussy to make a move.”

Then he just nods once and leaves.

*

They’re supposed to be grounded until their parents die, but all it really takes is asking their mom if they can go to Demetri’s house and saying they have something important to tell him for her to cave and drop them off. She’s always had a soft spot for him, way more than for Hawk themself, which is infinitely annoying and occasionally convenient.

Demetri opens the door, so they’re off to a good start. 

“Hey,” Hawk says, looking at the welcome mat. Thinking about friction, how all of their steps on it over the years have staying power, contributed to wearing down the cheery letters. 

“Hey…” Demetri says, drawing the word out the way he only does when he’s wary or really close to falling asleep. It sounds entirely different from how he stretches syllables when he’s being sarcastic. 

Hawk lets their hands form fists the way they’ve been wanting to since before the drive here. If Demetri notices, he doesn’t show it. Not a flinch. “You know how you keep bringing up the binary brothers thing?”

They still aren’t looking at him, but they can tell he blinks. They can picture his expression perfectly: the squint to his eyes, the tilt to his head, the twitch in his left cheek. “Yeah…?”

“Well. Uh. I’m non-binary. And I don’t think of you as my brother.”

“Oh, my god,” Demetri says, not shocked or excited but _self-deprecating,_ this bizarre fucking guy, who is more full of himself than anyone Hawk’s ever met and still, by virtue of also being more persuasive than anyone Hawk’s ever met, manages to convince everyone including himself that he’s got a confidence deficit. Demetri literally facepalms. “I should’ve realized, with the name—”

Hawk laughs, real and light. It scares them that they don’t recognize the sound. “Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t a gender thing at first, but. It helped me figure some things out.” 

Demetri nods. Moves his hand like he’s adding things up, fingers bouncing from one imaginary factor to another. “And by not brothers, you mean…”

“You know what I mean,” Hawk says, rolling their eyes, but they’re smiling. Their skin feels tight in a way they can’t blame on the scabs. 

“Yeah, well, the least you could do is do me the favor of saying it.” He’s smirking, the little shit, arms crossed over his soft, skinny chest. 

“I can't explain the state that I’m in,” they say, expecting it to make him roll his eyes, but instead, his mouth falls open, speechless for once. And that—his lips look soft, too. God.

“You should probably come in,” he says, quiet. 

Demetri, who has never stopped himself from talking with such qualms that affects other mere mortals, like what the other person will think or whether he’s making himself too vulnerable, starts them off, and they spend somewhere between three and six hours just _getting into it,_ like—

“You didn’t ask me to come with you. You didn’t even tell me. You just showed up one day a totally different person.”

“You used to talk over me all the time. I thought you’d try to talk me out of it. And then you kept saying how stupid all of it was, like I was putting on an act.”

“I didn’t know it meant that much to you. And I was… jealous. Of the attention you were getting, but mostly of all the attention you were giving to everybody else.”

—neither of them cry, but Demetri definitely starts sniffing harder than he did during that really hellish allergy season in sixth grade—

“I shouldn’t have hurt you. I’m scared of the shit I did, how easy it was, how badly I wanted it. Everything just made sense like that, you know? It didn’t hurt. But now everything hurts, and I’m scared, and I’m so sorry—”

“Jesus, I’m a dick, I totally deadnamed you in front of half our grade. And I shouldn’t have said any of that shit, fucking obviously, I understand if you never trust me again, I don’t know how you managed to enough to come out to me but it means the world to me, seriously—”

—and eventually, improbable as it felt this morning, they run out of things to be sorry about. It’ll still take more time than anything else, they get that, but—

“And god, I want to hold your hand, I feel like I should be blushing, but come on, I've always valued you more than I value my dignity.” 

And what could Hawk ever do but hold their hand palm-up and hold their breath as Demetri sets his own in it? He’s got calluses they shouldn’t be surprised about. Broad knuckles. 

“Your hands are soft,” he murmurs, and they think, _How?_

After everything?

They just sit, for a bit. Eventually, though, they can’t help but think. They remember Kyler asking what girl would ever want to kiss _that._ And a girl has, since then, but—Demetri would’ve laid one on them right there in the library if it hadn’t been likely to get them smashed to a pulp. 

He turns his head. He’s always been able to read their mind.

“Yeah?” he asks, so soft they could cry from it if they trusted themself to ever be able to stop, and they nod. He cradles their face in his free hand, careful and sure, and yeah, Hawk’s most private thoughts were right, Demetri has no fucking clue how to kiss, but they’ll be damned if they interrupt him to say it to his face. 

**Author's Note:**

> i’m on tumblr @campgender if you wanna say hi!


End file.
